in a few minutes stepped out of the tunnel’s mouth on to a mighty platform, half way down the mountain. Jack cast a swift glance to right and left, but the area of masonry was quite bare. They were the only human beings thereon. He turned to speak to Dolores, and found her staring motionless at the magnificent scene before her.
The platform, Jack guessed, was fully a quarter of a mile in length, and enormously wide. It had first been hewn out of the living rock, and then faced with masonry, flagged with stones. Here was adopted the same device for misleading strangers as had been done in the court of the gods, at the entrance from Totatzine. The whole face of the cliff, at the back of the terrace, was perforated with tunnels, and now that they had moved to the verge of the platform neither of them could tell which tunnel they had come out of. Saving one, all those passages led to death and destruction. Only one was safe, and that the tunnel distinguished by the opal sign. No one, ignorant of that sign, could have escaped death.
“I don’t wonder Totatzine remains hidden,” said Jack, thoughtfully. “The whole of that path is a mass of danger and snares. Now, however, we shall have a clearer way.”
Turning towards the east, they beheld a vast stair-case sloping downward to a broad road, at the sides of which were giant images of the gods. In the pale moonlight they looked like demons, so frightful were their aspects. In long lines, like pillars, they stretched away eastward, into the forests, ending in dim obscurity. On either side, dense foliage; away in the distance, a sea of green trees. There was nothing but trackless woods and this great road, piercing into the emerald profundity like a wedge. Behind, arose tall red cliffs, crowned with ancient trees, tunnelled with black cavities. From thence spread out the platform with its huge blocks of stone, its walls covered with hieroglyphics, statues of fierce gods, and vast piles of truncated towers. Below, the forests, the roadway, the staircase.
“What a terrible place, Dolores,” said Jack, drawing a long breath. “It is like the abode of demons. Come! it is now after midnight, and the moon will soon be setting. While we have the light, let us try to reach the end of yonder avenue.”
“One moment, Juan,” replied Dolores, drawing forth something from her bosom. “While Cocom was with you, I went up to the shrine of Huitzilopochtli and took in—this.”
Between her fingers, in the pale moonlight, it flashed faintly with weak sparks of many coloured fire. Jack bounded forward.
“The Harlequin Opal!” he exclaimed, delighted. “You have taken the Harlequin Opal.”
Chapter IX.
The Fugitives
The sun goes down, the twilight wanes,
With reddened spurs and hanging reins,
We urge our steeds across the plains.
For you and I are flying far,
From those who would our loving mar,
And prison you with bolt and bar.
Sigh not, dear one, look not so white,
My castle stands on yonder height,
We’ll reach it e’er the morning’s light.
The future’s joy this night is born,
I wed thee in the early morn,
And laugh my rivals twain to scorn.
It was fifty miles from Totatzine to the coast. Dolores being a woman, and weak, Jack, owing to illness, not being quite so strong as usual, they found it difficult to do more on an average than two miles an hour. To make up for slow walking they stretched out their pedestrianism to twelve hours between dawn and eve, thus reaching the sea-shore in two days. They arrived at the cave spoken of by Cocom, which was a harbour of refuge to them in their sore distress, completely worn out, body and soul and garments. Still they felt a certain amount of comfort in three consolations: First, they had escaped from Totatzine with their lives. Secondly, the wallet was not yet exhausted of meat and drink, so that they were in no danger of starvation. Thirdly, Cocom, always supposing he would hoodwink the priests as to his share in their escape, would arrive within twelve hours or thereabouts. Thus fortified with food and hope, they stayed thankfully in the cave and waited the arrival of the old Indian.
As to the journey from platform to cave, that had been a horrible dream, a nightmare of hardship, of weariness, of many pangs. Starting from the terrace shortly after midnight, they had traversed the avenue in three hours. It was five miles in length, and proceeding at the rate of two miles every sixty minutes, it can be easily seen that they could gain the shelter of the forest long before dawn. The great road ended abruptly amid a confused heap of ruins, forest trees, tangled undergrowth. Doubtless, in the old time it had continued even to the coast, but time and the Indians had obliterated all traces of its magnificence five miles down. The former did this because it is his invariable custom to so treat all human works, which set themselves up as enduring for ever; the latter played havoc with the relics of their ancestors’ magnificence, so as to hide the city of Totatzine from the eyes of the white destroyers, who had trodden out of existence those same ancestors. Nature had also done her share in the work of destruction, and sent a wave of green trees across the straight line of cause-way. Therefore, the road which began so proudly at the foot of the great staircase ended suddenly, after five miles, in the tangled wilderness.
The journey from Totatzine to this point had been long and arduous. The moon had set behind the hills so that it was now dark, and to explore an unknown forest in such gloom would have been foolish, therefore Jack insisted that they should take some rest. In the midst of an old palace he constructed a bed for Dolores with the aid of his and her own cloak, and after seeing her safely bestowed therein, lay down at the entrance so as to act as a sleeping sentinel if such a thing be possible. Nothing particular occurred, however, and when they awoke the sun was already high in the heavens. Then they made a frugal breakfast and resumed their journey.
The way being no longer clearly defined, their progress was necessarily slow from this point. To the right, on the trunk of a tree, appeared the sign of a scarlet opal as before pictured on the rocks, so to the right they went, and at once, even at these few steps from the causeway, found themselves in the heart of a wild, tropical forest. There was something terrible to these two civilised beings about the primeval savagery of this vegetation and exuberant foliage. Dense, tangled, almost impenetrable, it reminded Jack of the wood grown by fairy power round the palace of the sleeping beauty. That forest, however was to keep lovers out; this, alas! served to keep these lovers in. It lay between them and the coast, quite thirty-five miles of wild growth, and at times Dolores almost despaired of breaking through the barrier. Not so Jack, he was hopeful of ultimate success being strengthened in his faith by the constant appearance of the opal sign.
On every side of them rose giant trees of hoary age, their trunks seemingly supporting the verdant roof above-head. At times, so dense were the leaves that sky and sun and kindly light were shut out entirely, and they moved through a translucent twilight of tremulous green. From trunks and boughs depended lianas like ropes binding the forest giants together, or, dropping to the ground, formed a ladder up which climbed the most exquisite flowers. Splendid tree-ferns drooped their gigantic fronds on high, springing thickly from tall pillars, rough, brown, and hairy. Below, the ground was thick with brilliant blossoms, which seized every chance offered by rock, liana, and trunk to climb upward to that light excluded by the sea of foliage overhead.
At every step the forest changed
